I am more than a dress,
a blues song you clothe me in
so your darkness won’t feel
as heavy as your tongue.

Where there’s bone there’s wings.
I can fly a sky of notes you can’t write
because freedom is a place in me
you can’t find.

Will and weather, cloud and feather,
what you think you hold isn’t even in your hands.
This black and blue bird is a sister of crows.
When the spirit says go, a ****** will grow.

Half asleep,
barely able
to feel
the coffee cup
in my hands,
I wander morning
searching for
a destination
my calendar
has not yet mapped.

I wonder if my legacy
will merely be a faint light
in the peripheral vision
of a passer’s eye or a shadow figure
of a memory, the name on the tip
of a tongue one can’t seem to form.

No matter how many letters I write
to my ten-year-old self she doesn’t
seem to trust she will ever be first in line
because she’s been taught, she’s
supposed to be last.

I am beginning to understand
why I’ve always been in love with dandelions.
They are petaled, defiant sunlight
thriving where nothing else can.

They come with their offhand,
stale yesterday words
that once felt like a knife.

I grew past the bleeding.

Now they are barbs
cutting themselves for
attention.

There’s a smile that wants
to dance across my lips,
but I taste its sweet,
and I haven’t an urge for sugar.

I do find humor in the
civil war on my face,
and the audience
who’s not sure if I’m angry
or simply (if simple ever fits) insane.

My husband swears I’ve been
reading Bukowski again,
those whiskey cigarette lines
keeping his bluebird from
nesting in my chest.

It’s a day… Just a day.
I‘ll get through it, around it
or over it.

But that smile, hmmm,
I’ll keep it to a smirk.

This poem is everything
I didn’t erase

The sea I swam until
the shore was closer
than drowning.

My mind took so many detours.
I ran toward the sun,
become tangled in why
I didn’t do the dishes,
wondered if my bookshelf
had one more space for Apocalyptic.

Sitting in the litter of what
I couldn’t complete I question
if this is poetry or confession.

Tuesday has way more ink
than I have words for paper.